Microcosm Inc. will develop new "alternative" expendable launcher technology under a $1.4M contract from USAF Phillips Lab, using low-cost hardware and emphasizing manufacturing technology for reliability.
TRW is filing a protest over its loss of a $2.5G black satellite contract to MM.
The military is concerned about the combination of its shrinking space budgets and the exploding commercial comsat market, which will increasingly limit suppliers' interest in military contracts. Almost all current military comsats will need replacing early in the next century, and there isn't the slightest prospect of being able to afford all-mil-spec hardware for that, so non-critical requirements will have to move to commercial equipment. One proposal is an equivalent of the Civil Reserve Air Fleet scheme, in which commercial comsat operators would be paid to incorporate some military features (e.g., resistance to electromagnetic-pulse damage) into their satellites. [Hmm, I dunno. Recent experience with the CRAF, which pays airlines to equip airliners with reinforced floors and make them available for military cargo work in time of crisis, has not been good -- the CRAF airlines lost business during the Gulf War when their airplanes were called up, and didn't get it back afterward, and generally don't think CRAF pays well enough.]
New White House launcher policy designates DoD as lead agency for upgrading expendables and NASA as lead for reusable development, with both given 90 days to present specific plans. The USAF will hold a competition in 1995-6 to pick a new medium launcher with an upgrade path to Titan IV size. The policy of launching government payloads on US-made launchers will continue, although use of foreign components is encouraged. NASA will involve private industry in its planning, and will pursue a subscale flight demonstrator of its preferred next-generation concept. The current shuttle orbiter fleet will be maintained until a replacement system is available; no new orbiters. Use of surplus missiles as launchers will be allowed for government missions only, and only if it is cheaper than commercial alternatives.
NASA's Dante 2 robot, exploring Mt.Spurr in Alaska, is in trouble -- it fell over while working its way out on 2 Aug. The problem appears to have been a combination of terrain that changed due to ice melting, a fogged window that disabled D2's laser rangefinder, and a poor foothold that gave way when D2 put its weight on it. Worse, D2's tether was severed during a first attempt at retrieval, probably by a rough edge on D2's frame. Plans are afoot to get a net around D2 for helicopter hoisting; apart from wanting to retrieve the expensive hardware, the researchers want to find out how well D2's structure stood up to the accident.
ESA working on initial requirements for a $400M lunar-lander mission to explore the Moon's south pole circa 2001: LEDA. It would carry a small rover, capable of travelling 50km, to search for possible ice deposits. The lander/rover combination would also assess usefulness of the Moon for observatories, and experimentally process lunar soil for oxygen and helium-3. ESA envisions a rapid program, emphasizing hardware rather than paper, and stressing technology development to give ESA a role in future international lunar programs. ESA wants to make this a joint effort between ESA and the major European national space agencies, notably France (which is interested in the rover and in instruments), Germany (which is skeptical and wants to make sure the project doesn't divert effort from current efforts), and Italy (which is interested in building the sampling system).
LEDA would weigh about 900kg, about 100kg of that being rover. Current concepts look kind of like a miniature Apollo LM descent stage. Planned surface lifetime is four months. Initial weight breakdowns show about 200kg of the total for instruments, with about 10kg of that on the rover and perhaps 40kg budgeted for a sampling arm on the lander. Currently unsettled is whether the lander would do a direct descent or loiter in lunar orbit to do its own site-scouting photography.
ESA specifically denies recent reports that Europe is planning its own broadly-based lunar program. "We are not proposing a major European lunar program that would lead to manned European lunar missions or a European lunar base." ESA's main objective is to attain at least the same level of capabilities as Japan, which is increasingly seen as the leader in near-term lunar exploration (Japan is building hardware for its 1997 Lunar-A mission -- three penetrators and an orbiter -- and is actively pursuing later possibilities; ESA is impressed by Clementine but sees US lunar exploration as totally disorganized and lacking any followup).
Also in the approval pipeline at ESA is another mission, Moon Orbiting Observatory (MORO), an orbiter with advanced multispectral imaging. [Anybody know whether it would also have a gamma-ray spectrometer?] It's not in competition with LEDA -- it's a candidate for the next medium-sized science mission, a different funding area from LEDA's technology emphasis -- but *is* in competition with half a dozen other science-mission candidates. If both LEDA and MORO fly, they could be launched on the same Ariane 5. Each is budgeted at circa $400M, including launch costs. (If LEDA can't fly with MORO, it might have to start from GTO to share a launch with a comsat.)
Successful Ariane launch of Brasilsat B1 and Turksat 1B on 10 Aug.
Initial runs of Pratt&Whitney's replacement SSME LOX turbopump successful. Minor problems have been seen, but nothing important, and the program is on track for first flight next May.
NASA is rethinking life-extension plans for SSME fuel-pump blades after discovery of new cracks in an old trouble area.
Martin Marietta, anticipating that it will be a while before GPS-based systems reach the accuracy needed for worst-case blind landings, proposes an alternative: borrowing the airliner's weather radar for a quarter of a second on each sweep to do synthetic-aperture-radar scans for landmarks, and matching those against prerecorded digital maps of the airport area, using a correlation technique -- developed for missile guidance -- which is not thrown off by an occasional new landmark. This would provide an absolute position reference for cancelling inertial drift and/or GPS position error, giving accuracies of circa 1m. The last 200ft of the descent would still have to be made using inertial or GPS guidance, since radar mapping performance deteriorates as angles become too shallow. At that time, a radar modified for this could be pointed forward and used as an obstacle detector, to spot aircraft or vehicles intruding on the runway. Flight demonstrations planned this fall.
Justice for groups that doesn't include justice | Henry Spencer for individuals is a mockery. | henry@zoo.toronto.edu